Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Fall Town Hall Meeting

So as to appear accessible and approachable, Sexton hosts at least one Town Hall meeting open to all students (graduate and undergraduate) each semester. The first Town Hall meeting of 2006-2007 was held last week. For coverage of the general issues discussed, see the Washington Square Newsarticle on the meeting.

The first interesting thing to note about this meeting is that Sexton and his student puppet government revised the format of the meeting so that attendees' questions would have to be pre-screened. Only after GSOC members objected were attendees even allowed to read their own questions at the microphone!

The second interesting thing to note is that when asked what the priorities for student government at NYU should be this year, Sexton's responses were not focused on any of the many problems internal to NYU (whether graduate employee working conditions, the financial difficulties facing undergraduates, improving academic integrety, or anything else germane to an academic institution). Instead, he avoided the question by listing his personal favorite global issues, like poverty and global warming. Now, Nerds are all for taking action against poverty and global warming, but aside from reducing the poverty of NYU students and using fewer fossil fuels on campus, there is not much the student council can do about these things.

And the third interesting thing to note is that someone finally asked Sexton why he goes around hugging people without their permission. Sexton had the audacity to claim that he does not ever hug people without their permission--when many people in the room had been so hugged! Nerds wonder why Sexton's high-priced lawyers have not told him that hugging people without their permission (or even with it, if that permission has been coerced by the power of the presidency) could constitute sexual harassment.

The Washington Square News continued its coverage of the Town Hall meeting with an editorial today suggesting that while the new format attempted at this Town Hall was inappropriate, something needs to be done to prevent "unfair manipulation by groups like GSOC." Nerds just want to take this moment to inform the unnamed authors of this editorial that GSOC members who attend Town Hall meetings attend as individual graduate students at NYU. We ask our questions as individuals. We do not have some fancy cabal prior to the meeting where we decide which questions to ask, who should ask them, and how to prevent anyone else from saying anything. In fact, at some Town Halls, there have been fewer than 10 people in attendance who are not GSOC members (including the WSN reporter!). In actuality, what is going on is that GSOC members are the people who care the most about the future of our university, the people who choose to make the time to show up and to work for a better environment for all of us.

4 Comments:

Anonymous said...

Okay, I don't agree with your unionization agenda at all (I respectfully disagree though, not like some of the strange-o's who post comments here) but I DO agree 100% that the Sexton "hugging" quirk is a deliberately obnoxious imposition on human boundaries! I was in a meeting with "Sex"ton a few years ago (obstensibly a luncheon to meet and greet students who were also staff and administrators, but actually a phony set up to extoll "Sex's" virtues to a big-cheese donor), and he claimed that if one did not wish to be hugged, one should raise up one hand to indicate their preference. What kind of crap is that? Just DO NOT touch me! I don't know this clown, why would I want him to hug me? Who came up with the "hug" thing anyway? How can you possibly think this is a good idea? Like I said, I may not agree with you, but I do think that our differences can be better resolved by eliminating some of the tools in the Bobst tool-box!